A is for Aden and Z is for Zanzabar

A is for Aden and Z is for Zanzibar... Now what is between? For the world wide classical era philatelist and stamp collector, a country specific philatelic survey is offered by the blog author, Jim Jackson, with two albums: Big Blue, aka Scott International Part 1 (checklists available), and Deep Blue, aka William Steiner's Stamp Album Web PDF pages. Interested? So into the Blues...

Thursday, March 9, 2017

British Central Africa - Bud's Big Blue

"Coat of Arms"

Bud's Big BlueBud's Observations

Bantu tribes settled what became British Central Africa some
thousands of years ago, the British Central Africa Protectorate was proclaimed
in 1889, British Central Africa became Nyasaland in 1907, and Nyasaland became
independent Malawi in 1964. Malawi is one of the world’s least developed
countries.

A motto “Light in darkness” (irony noted) is inscribed
beneath a coat of arms on the 1895-96 stamps, although dropped from those that
follow. Two Bantu men stand on tiger pelts holding European-style mining tools
but, as it turned out, prospecting was bleak until the days of uranium and rare
earth extraction. At the top is a tree where one might expect to see the
likeness of Queen Victoria. Here my knowledge of British heraldry falters. It’s
too symmetrical and frail to be a Baobab, the tree normally associated with the
region. But it looks suspiciously like cannabis, a forerunner of today’s
“Malawi gold”, the local name for export-quality pot.

I noticed, only when Jim pointed it out, that the space BB
reserves for the 1895 1d has been occupied by a 2d and the 1d is stuck on the
supplement page.

Census: seven in BB spaces, three on the supplement page.

Jim's Observations"BCA" stamps are not found much in Big Blue collections. Why? The stamps in the Scott Classic catalogue tend to be expensive- from the $10's to $100's to 1891-95 Scott 17 ten pound red brown @ $4,000+! The seven "checklist" stamps are more reasonable at <$1-$10+.

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About Me

After thirty years of being away, I resumed my 1840-1940 worldwide collection in 2011. I initially settled on Big Blue, the Scott International Volume (Part) 1. But there was no checklist: - until now. You can see the results with my blog posts.
In the meantime, I began to put my collection in the WW classic Steiner albums (Deep Blue). I love evaluating the classical stamps for a country, and reporting the findings here.
And I would appreciate any suggestions for making this effort better. Enjoy!
Jim